


a suitcase of fireflies

by seditonem



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, the character death is brief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-28
Updated: 2014-04-28
Packaged: 2018-01-21 03:52:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1536518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seditonem/pseuds/seditonem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>But it’s five years later now, and Percy’s driving back to Camp Half Blood for the summer. </p><p>(alternate universe where Annabeth takes Luke's place)</p>
            </blockquote>





	a suitcase of fireflies

**Author's Note:**

> the notes from my lj account say this was originally for molokomolotov, so i assume it is still for her.   
> rated for swears and sexytimes.

It’s been five years since Annabeth died to save the entire world. Five years since Luke and Percy watched her remember herself, her humanity, and then had to watch her die. Percy didn’t know her as well as Luke did, but he knew enough about her to feel the incredible loss when she died.   
  
Of course, no one really ever dies – they just move on. At least, that what’s Nico said, his hand on Luke’s shoulder, his voice more soothing than the lament the dryads had begun.   
  
Luke just swiped at the inside corners of his eyes like he’d got dust in them and passed his hand over his mouth. He didn’t say anything. Percy didn’t have much time to talk to him after that – and then he was talking back to his dad, bitching at Zeus, and despite how much he wanted to look at Luke, to reassure himself that there was still something worth fighting for, after all that, he had to keep his focus.   
  
But it’s five years later now, and Percy’s driving back to Camp Half Blood for the summer.   
  


* * *

  
  
Chiron once said that Annabeth could’ve been like a sister to Percy. Percy had been twelve at the time, and he’d snorted, hurt and angry because Annabeth had betrayed his trust, and said he didn’t need her. He had  _Luke_.   
  
Annabeth had betrayed them all, had disappeared into nothingness with her invisibility cap.   
  
But Percy had Luke.   
  


* * *

  
  
Percy leaves his battered old Ford in the parking lot out front (they’ve had to add one since the camp expanded and parents started dropping their kids off themselves, instead of having satyrs bring them in) and shoulders his duffle bag. The sun’s scorching, making sweat bead on Percy’s spine, and he finishes the last of the litre water bottle as he walks up to the Big House and makes his way down to the cabins.   
  
Poseidon’s cabin is as deserted as ever, but this year Percy’s more aware of the divide than ever. This year he’s outgrown the training; this year he’s training kids himself. The reminder of it – his new camp tee-shirt with the word INSTRUCTOR emblazoned on it – makes him pause for a moment. He pulls Riptide out of his pocket, uncapping it and allowing the familiar weight to rest in his hand.   
  
“Nostalgic already?”   
  
Percy looks up, about to bite out some sort of retort, but stops short because it’s Luke he finds in the doorway, not Grover. He’s not sure how he didn’t recognise Luke’s voice, but since it’s been three years since they spoke face to face and one since they had a proper phone conversation that lasted more than five minutes, he can’t say he’s surprised.   
  
“Somethin’ like that,” he grins. Luke smiles back with an ease that makes Percy’s heart ache.   
  
“You wanna head out to the beach? There’s some good tides going on – though I don’t suppose you really need to worry about that,” Luke suggests, the corners of his lips curling upwards as he remembers Percy’s heritage.   
  
“Sure,” Percy shrugs, capping Riptide and slipping it into his pocket. He rummages through his bag and pulls out a pair of swim shorts. “I’ll catch you up.”   
  
Five minutes later he jogs down to the beach, stopping just out of calling distance from Luke. It’s not that he doesn’t want to talk to Luke – it’s that there’s too much to say at once, and Percy doesn’t want to fuck this up. Luke did business studies, and Percy did marine biology, and he’s not sure how they’re supposed to meet in the middle. But Percy’s spent five years aching for Luke, five years thinking  _Why not now?_  because they don’t have to worry about Kronos anymore. Five years wanting, waiting, building himself up and knocking himself down because there’s no way someone like Luke will want someone like him.   
  
The distant figure of Luke on the beach strips off his shirt and wades out into the water. The sunlight is fading now, no longer the scorching heat of the mid-afternoon that Percy arrived in. It glints off the water, makes everything look like a vintage movie that Percy’s not involved in, merely watching.   
  
But then Luke turns and waves, and Percy finds himself stepping forward like a sleepwalker. He’s suddenly aware of the cool breeze from the ocean; of his heart, beating so hard he can almost see it. He feels tight, nervous, the flesh on his arms contracting into goose-bumps.   
  
He hardly notices the water around his ankles as he wades in. Luke’s standing at mid-thigh height in the water, shielding his eyes with one hand. He’s only a couple of inches taller than Percy at the best of times, and here in the ocean they’re almost exactly the same height. Percy stops a metre away from him, afraid to get any closer lest he do something, say something, that breaks everything, but Luke closes the gap between them. His expression is unreadable.  
  
“I missed you,” he says, eventually. He speaks like it’s painful, like every word is a shard of glass in his skin that has to be removed but hurts him with every movement.   
  
“Yeah,” Percy replies, mouth dry; “me too.”   
  
“Dad told me you did marine biology,” Luke continues, standing next to Percy so they’re both facing the open ocean. Percy can feel the current swirling around Luke’s legs, clinging to his skin, between the thin material of his swim trunks.   
  
“He told me you’re doing business,” Percy replies. The small talk feels awkward, like they’re only acquaintances, not two people who’ve been through a near apocalypse together. Luke doesn’t seem like the same boy that Percy told about his Achilles spot, but he knows Luke remembers.   
  
“Fuck,” Luke says, quietly, sighing. “I miss the open road. Don’t you?” He turns to Percy, a half smile on his face, and gestures to the ocean like that makes it any clearer. “I miss – I miss us, driving all over the place and only just getting by. I miss sleeping rough and laughing about shitty jokes and being so fucking scared all the time, but it being all right. Because we were side by side.”   
  
Percy’s heart is winning the world record for the shortest time to break into pieces. He knows Luke means every word – just not in the way Percy wants him to. And Luke’s perfect fingers are curling and uncurling, his long wrists and arms hanging by his sides. He’s more tan than Percy remembers, and there’s an alpha and an omega on his necklace. Percy wasn't there to see those changes, wasn't there to watch them.   
  
“Fucking say something,” Luke says, almost laughing. Percy looks up at him and nearly steps backwards: Luke’s eyes are wild, like there’s something there he can’t vocalise.   
  
And Percy thinks –   
  
Percy thinks –-  
  


* * *

  
  
When Percy was thirteen, Luke stumbled into the Poseidon cabin smelling sweet, like alcohol and sweat and sugar, and collapsed on Percy’s bed.   
  
“Hey,” he said, sounding surprisingly lucid, as he poked Percy’s side.   
  
“What?” Percy muttered, pulling the covers down enough for him to see Luke’s face.   
  
“Move over,” Luke sighed, kicking off his shoes clumsily, all his movements laced with drunken confidence and flippancy. He crawled under the covers next to Percy, the rough denim of his jeans scraping against the sheets.   
  
“Fuck off,” Percy huffed, turning his back on Luke and trying to get back to sleep. Except Luke was impossible to ignore, even when he was asleep, and especially when he decided to draw patterns down Percy’s spine. “ _Stop that_ ,” Percy hissed, wriggling away from the touch. While Luke’s fingers were a little more than a stiff breeze, it was still embarrassing to get hard over them.   
  
“Y’know,” Luke yawned, moving closer to Percy, close enough to drape his arm over Percy’s side and press his face into the back of Percy’s neck, “this won’t last forever.”   
  
“What do you mean?” Percy asked, frozen in place by Luke’s touch.   
  
“Mean,” yawned Luke again, “someday – someday you’ll wake up in the morning and things’ll be ok.”   
  


* * *

  
  
\--  _If not now, then when?_  
  
And leans in, catching Luke’s jaw with one hand, pressing their lips together. He feels Luke breathe in, surprised, and licks gently at Luke’s lower lip, running his thumb along the hard line of Luke’s jaw. It’s suicidal, and any second Luke’s going to slap him, so he pulls away before Luke can do so, and moves to walk away. If all else fails, he thinks, he can get the water to hold Luke in place, or he can hide under the water forever, or –   
  
Luke’s hand on his elbow stops him, and then his chest is pressed against Percy’s back.   
  
“Finally caught on,” Luke murmurs, pressing his mouth against Percy’s shoulder.   
  
“What?” Percy frowns, turning around to look Luke in the eye.   
  
Luke snorts, undignified, and kisses Percy again, and again, and then kisses each eyelid for good measure. “You do realise that if one of us was a girl, this would’ve happened years ago?”   
  
“ _What_?” Percy asks, utterly confused. Luke grins.  
  
“Aphrodite’s been trying to hook you up with the hottest female demigod -  _obviously_  one of her kids – for years now, barnacle brain,” Luke explains. “She’s gonna be so mad when she finds out I got there first.”   
  
He kisses Percy again, licking down Percy’s neck to bite lightly at his collarbones, leaving marks that’ll show when Percy does training tomorrow, marks that the kids will laugh at and ask him about and that Percy won’t say anything about, but grin to himself about.   
  
“You did, did you?” he asks, still trying to let his brain catch up with Luke.  
  
“Yeah,” Luke nods. He looks Percy squarely in the eye, his hands on Percy’s hips. “I got there a good twelve years ago, so.”   
  


* * *

  
  
The day Percy left for college, he got a call from Luke.  
  
“Hey,” he said, mouth dry suddenly, though he’d just drunk a whole bottle of Cola.   
  
“I’m sitting in my new apartment,” Luke told him, sounding distant, like there was more than a couple of states between them. “’tween you and me, I don’t know how long this whole ‘work days, study nights’ thing is gonna last.”   
  
Percy laughed. “Between you and me, I don’t know how long this whole ‘study days, fight monsters nights’ thing is gonna last.” He could almost hear Luke smile down the line.   
  
“Yeah, well. We’ll see, I guess.”  
  
Silence. Percy zipped up the last of his bags and hauled them into the car.   
  
“I’ll call you,” he said, suddenly, and hung up while Luke was halfway through goodbye.   
  
He didn’t.   
  


* * *

  
  
They leave the beach just after dusk, walking back up to camp close enough to touch if they want to. Percy sits alone at his table, eating little and drinking only Cola. He slips away from the after dinner activities as soon as possible, walking back to his cabin with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders feeling like they’ve been burnt by the sun.   
  
He leaves the door open, and it’s only a few minutes before Luke shuts it behind him. They drink the sight of one another in for a moment, and then Luke’s pushing Percy back onto the bed, falling with him, pulling at drawstrings and buttons till they’re both naked.   
  
Percy feels like he should fill the silence with something, say anything, but Luke kisses him thoroughly, pulls Percy’s legs up around his waist, and smoothes his thumbs over Percy’s cheekbones. Percy gives everything of himself, suddenly content not to receive anything if it means he gets to keep Luke in his bed for as long as possible. He presses his hands against the smooth planes of Luke’s chest, over his strong thighs, along his back, trying to touch everywhere at once.   
  
“Percy,” Luke whispers, like he’s desperate, and pushes his cock insistently against Percy’s. The next kiss is messy, like they’re both too tightly strung to make it good, and Luke moves and moves, his hand around the both of them, and Percy falls apart again and again.   
  


* * *

  
  
The day after Annabeth died, Percy woke up to find Luke’s sleeping on his chest, his breath gentle against Percy’s right wrist. They were outside, sleeping by the beach, and there was sand in Percy’s hair and on his cheek, under his fingernails and the curve of Luke’s lower lip.   
  
Percy lay in the morning sun, feeling his cheeks begin to burn, and waited for Luke to wake up.   
  


* * *

  
  
When Percy wakes in the morning, Luke’s legs tangled with his own, he only tries to remember what day it is for a moment. It doesn’t matter, he thinks, as Luke pulls him closer, still sleeping. It’s someday. 

**Author's Note:**

> title from emily wells' symphony 6: fair thee well & the requiem mix


End file.
